IBM is expected to announce a new 64-bit microchip for personal computers today, but declined to state which PC manufacturers will use it. We reported on an eWeek story that ran in late September regarding IBM and Apple teaming up on a next generation 64-bit CPU called the GigaProcessor Ultralite, or GPUL. IBM's new chip is slated to go into production in late 2003 and will process 64 bits of data at 1.8GHz. According to eWeek sources back in September, Apple was testing the GPUL in Cupertino on OS X-based hardware. Apple declined to comment on IBM's announcement … again. Thanks to MacMinute for the link.Rob note: Perhaps Apple is waiting for results from IBM before making a commitment. Late 2003 is still quite a ways off. Until then, Apple will certainly stick with Motorola. The immediate bonus of a 64-bit chip is that it will allow usage of memory spaces over 4 GB. That's the 32-bit limit. High end users could benefit from such an architecture today.

USER COMMENTS 45 comment(s)

entry and power levels?(11:01am EST Mon Oct 14 2002)just to throw it out there. Could the PowerPC 970 be apple's entry chip where the Power4 would be for power and server users? They're already supporting two chip's now so it's not too far out of the realm of possibility – by Just Wondren'

to Just Wondren'(11:14am EST Mon Oct 14 2002)There is no big difference in as you say “supporting” two chips now. The G3 and G4 run the same set off instructions with the exception of the G4 having a SIMD called AltiVec.

Realistically the chips, support the OS and not vice versa but let's not get into the technicalities of that, too many possibilities. IBM documents have even shown that the Power4 chip could almost run OSX straight out of the box with the exception of a few instructions. They said in those internal docs (which you can search on their website) that with slight modification a Power4 could run OSX.

We'll see G4's in the “consumer” models and 970 in the “pro” models. I don't know if we will ever see a full blown Power4 in a Mac. Moving forward maybe Apple will ask IBM to develop the Power5 with the proper instruction set to run OS X, maybe not, but I think they will continue to collaborate unless Motorola realizes they lost a great development partner in Apple and tries to leapfrog IBM with a new offering that is Mac-centric (I doubt it though) – by Homey

Hmmm……(11:26am EST Mon Oct 14 2002)….I kind of wonder whatever happened to that guy posting here claiming to be an Apple Exec and saying that Apple woudl be allying with AMD for Athlons. The plot continues to stir, bake for an hour at 350….. – by Ziwiwiwiwiwiwiwiwiwi

Not feasible(11:48am EST Mon Oct 14 2002)AMD? Ha! What a joke. That's the “contingency plan” IF the PowerPC chips don't work out (Project: Marklar)

But realistically…an AMD chip cannot run OS X right out of the box. The instruction set would need to be changed. Therefore this is not realistic. And economically speaking it makes no sense. At least just not now. -) – by GioMatrix

Truth is…(1:07pm EST Mon Oct 14 2002)vis a vis the market conditions & the Apple corporation at the moment – Apple cannot realistically pull off a total platform change (which would be required to use ANY x86 CPU). Its fragile coalition of software producers are only a few years “over” the last major change of architecture, and the introduction of OSX is causing its own panoply of headaches. Getting the GPUL to run OS/X & family of compatible applications shouldn't be much of an issue. The only thing holding Apple back from an announcement of gleeful progress is their 20+ year relationship with the rather 2nd notch Motorola company.

– by TastesLikeChicken

Underdogs(1:08pm EST Mon Oct 14 2002)Why does it seem that all the CPU makers besides AMD and Intel are TRYING to be the underdogs? I mean AMD is trying to keep up on CPU speeds with Intel, and is barely doing it. The others seem to just take it for granted that there is no way its gonna happen so they introduce low clockspeed chips… Last I heard, Ultrasparc just released a 1.2GHz monster lol. Motorola has a super fast 1.0GHz chip out. Transmeta has a blazing 800MHz chip out!!!!! These are highest speeds acorrding to chipgeek…

Yes, I know clock speed isn't everything, but those procs still SUCK!! – by RPGMan

Hello…(1:09pm EST Mon Oct 14 2002)AMD doesnt plan to release their 64bit chip till 2Q of 2003. IBM will have its Power4 chip in full production late 2003. so you see AMD will is not ahead of IBM for releasing chips available to consumers. its about the same time. the thing that will be interesting is who's gonna go with what!

as for that stupid idiot who posted apple going with AMD?!?!? doooohhhhh!(homer simpson)

slashdot.org has an article on this 64 bit issue…read it. – by :P

RPGMan…(1:28pm EST Mon Oct 14 2002)The UltraSparc is a 64 bit chip, right? And it has been out for a little while now, right? It is running at 1.2 ghz.

IBM will release their 64 bit chip next year at 1.8 ghz. I don't think that is an underdog at all with the UltraSparc. – by dbzeag

dbzeag(1:34pm EST Mon Oct 14 2002)“I don't think that is an underdog at all with the UltraSparc.” Funny, I think it is.

“IBM will release their 64 bit chip next year at 1.8 ghz.” According to Procspec, AMD is going to release a 2.7GHz 64-bit chip next year. I DO think IBM and the rest are slow about it.!– by RPGMan

Apple…(1:46pm EST Mon Oct 14 2002)will be a customer of this processor..

“”IBM will release their 64 bit chip next year at 1.8 ghz.” According to Procspec, AMD is going to release a 2.7GHz 64-bit chip next year. I DO think IBM and the rest are slow about it.!”Think again lame brain even though you admit clock speed isn't everything, check out the latest Mainframe IBM has to offer. It is based on Power4 chip.Even if you were to build a computer based on AMD 64 bit chip, it will never come to the performance of a mainframe.

– by RPGMan an idiot

for instance…(1:54pm EST Mon Oct 14 2002)RPGMan does not/cannot/will not accept that the GPUL will handle 8 OPs per clock, and will shove 6.4 GB/s through its bus (The Pentium and Hammer won't quite match that by late 2003)

Over/Under…(2:04pm EST Mon Oct 14 2002)Which chip will actually make it to market first, the 64 bit Hammer, or the 64 bit Power4lite…..? – by /././././

well…(2:14pm EST Mon Oct 14 2002)MS doesnt have a windows version that will support AMD's hammer chip yet. IBM's chip is already working on their servers(dual core)… so it would seem IBM has the advantage here in terms of actually having a working product… – by :P

Apple 64 bit will be too expensive for at least two years(4:44pm EST Mon Oct 14 2002)“AMD doesnt plan to release their 64bit chip till 2Q of 2003. IBM will have its Power4 chip in full production late 2003. so you see AMD will is not ahead of IBM for releasing chips available to consumers. its about the same time. the thing that will be interesting is who's gonna go with what!”

Go fuck yourself. I'll be able to buy the Hammer 64 bit chip for cheap $$$ compared to Apple who'll charge you $3500 for the first systems with their 64 bit for the first two years. What's the point of having a 64 bit chip if 97% of your users aren't going to be able to afford to buy it for the first two years its in production…you fucking retard.

B4 most of you Apple turds get a taste of 64 bit, I'll be on my 4th generation of AMD 64 bit…EAT THAT!!!! – by Vi0

AMD is aiming at the highend end market not at work processing fool like yourself. so what is cheap??? you dont even know how much they'll be charging for hammer… before you go mouthing off wait till the actuall product arrives… typical x86 simpletons..

sorry but apple will be ahead of the curve on this 64 bit issue… – by :P

Vi0(4:51pm EST Mon Oct 14 2002)“B4 most of you Apple turds get a taste of 64 bit, I'll be on my 4th generation of AMD 64 bit…EAT THAT!!!! “

Well… Have fun playing all those games on them, fuck-n00b.

We have money to make.– by PSDMan

Vi0: You're an idiot(5:01pm EST Mon Oct 14 2002)Both 64-bit chips are not out. Price availability, and capability will not be known until it comes out. Your statements prove that you're an idiot. Post your comments when there is actual products. – by Vi0 an idiot

First(7:28pm EST Mon Oct 14 2002)IBM, has more markup for each letter in its name printed on a chip that Intel does in having its name printed on a chip.

This will be a key advantage to the PC world.

Plus 64 bits for a linux based os wont help as much due to better memory management so 4GB is more effective on the Apple than PC.

Plus more pins will be required to access mor memory, and that equals cost.

AMD's hammer will be a beast, due to the northbridge being put inside the chip. so AMD and IBM are going to have higher costs to make chips than Intel, and they still will only run 1 thread at a time. – by Nataku

Nataku(8:04pm EST Mon Oct 14 2002)“they still will only run 1 thread at a time”

Sure Power4-jr won't have hyperthreading. But both the Athlon and the Power4 may count on “Speculative Pre-Compute” because they have much more execution resources than a Pentium 4. Hyperthreading only simulates additional execution units (and enables Speculative Pre-Computing for the flaky Pentium 4), while the Athlon and Power4 have those additional resources in hardware and in reality.

Besides Sisoft Sandra “Intel looks good” marks, Hyperthreading (on the Pentium 4) does not have much of overall performance improvements. – by Askheart

PPC 970(9:03pm EST Mon Oct 14 2002)The PPC 970 will have a 900Mhz FSB, which is almost double of anything on Intel or AMD's roadmap for at least two years. – by RP

As for AMD(11:48pm EST Mon Oct 14 2002)With the hammer and having the northbirdge built into it, is a waist of time. Its nothing revolutionary, just different packaging. It will make it more expresive, produce more heat, and more complicated to build so having high yeilds will be harder to reach. It would probably limit its ability to scale as high. When faster memory comes out they would have to redesign the northbridge to use it, or dissable it were it becomes waisted space. With it dissabled you would end up paying for 2 northbridges anyways. – by AMD SUCKS

TYPO(11:50pm EST Mon Oct 14 2002)expensive* typo:) – by AMD SUCKS

A.S. you are soooo lame(12:33am EST Tue Oct 15 2002)Since when did increased intergration increase costs. By your logic it would be cheaper to be hand wire every transistor in a computer to a printed circuit board rather than having a CPU, North Bridge South Bridge etc.

Good thing you're just an Intel troll. – by Intel SUCKS

funny(1:49am EST Tue Oct 15 2002)I think it's funny how an article about IBM's processor turns into another Intel-AMD debate. Why don't all the AMD fans stop getting off to Hammer, cause it's not even here. And both sides just realize that is more than one company making chips. And you shouldn't take it personally if one person buys an athlon or a pentium 4, or even a mac for this matter. Just buy what you want, and stop crying over this Intel-AMD thing. You know you're not going to change anyones' mind, so you just getting angry and getting other people angry. So calm down… Becides, there are more important things in life becides processors. – by Mgargan

However I'm looking at SPEC scores for the Athlon (as far I'm concerned as SPEC being much of an useless referential for real-world FP performance in most usual cases, there's nothing wrong in giving it a sneak look sometimes IMO).

(Note that this is a very memory intensive benchmark hence the cpu clock raised 1% but the FP scores have raised almost 10%)

How much SpecFP performance will IBM's Power4-child pump out of it? I'm really curious about it. – by Askheart

(2)(2:27am EST Tue Oct 15 2002)“(Note that this is a very memory intensive benchmark hence the cpu clock raised 1% but the FP scores have raised almost 10%)”

SpecFP is compiler-dependant too, that's one of the reasons why the Athlon sucks in this benchmark.

Drop the Intel compiler AMD, and go build one of your own… – by Askheart

HEY A BUNCH OF CHILD!(3:20pm EST Tue Oct 15 2002)Yes the article was about IBM next generation CPU! Wow, how constructive it is! It seems that youíre all working for one of those companies: amd, intel, apple, IBM. But Iím not working for one of these, so Iíll give my true opinion, WHATEVER the specs, Iíll still bet on IBMÖ and Apple, because itís still an hardware company, knows that un-optimized hardware worth nothing, WHATEVER the specs says! So you can continue to fight about whoís better and why, but windows is still not ready for the 64bit CPU. What Iím afraid of, for my own business, is that IBM could impose some criteria, like they did to Intel for the assembly language of the x86. I bet the reversing the situation will give another result, I hope! They cannot release non-evolving CPU with their name on it, itíll be a shame for IBMís brilliant engineers to make the same error again.

And for the super hyper mega cost of the CPU (and probably the machine) as you guys always complain about: macs are expensive, so itís the only market that can introduce a 64 bit expensive CPU in their desktop machines, without loosing usersÖ itís the best way to get windows the motivation (competition) to develop for hammer and itanium as well. – by ESI

Why can't we all just get along?(6:00pm EST Tue Oct 15 2002)I'm currently an AMD user myself but I'm glad to hear the news. More competition will hopefully stimulate more advances. So regardless of platform, I think we will all benefit in the long run. – by Andrew

(You didn't read it wrong, the clockspeed has gone 1% higher but the SpecFP results are… almost *18%* higher!)

SpecFP: the true memory benchmark– by Askheart

Funny isn't it(6:12am EST Wed Oct 16 2002)that no one has really said that they're over the moon about this. Surely like the man said (ESI) it's gotta be a good thing that there is another chip out there.

Competition is the magic ingredient that makes great developments possible. For all you Intel assholes out there and there appears to be a few. Can you imagine a world with only Intel, can you imagine what you would end up paying for their chips if they had no competition. You should be thankful that competition still exists in this tight sector. We all benefit from competition so think on soft-lads.

I'm excited, I like their logo– by spacca

Yeah so…(12:43pm EST Wed Oct 16 2002)The 970 will enable 8 ops/cycle – it dispatches five instructions per clock (4 instructions + 1 branch) *in program order* to a set of *issue queues*. The out-of-order execution logic then yanks instructions from these *issue queues* – out of program order – to feed the chip's *eight functional units*

The P4 and Athlon currently follow this type of scheme (dismantling instructions in to “uops”), however the 970 will dispatch groups of 5 “iops” at a time, dispatching op execution far more efficiently than the P4 competition (which dispatches uops in a strict linear queued order)

Add to this a 900 Mhz frontside bus (+/-/= to what Intel will be offering in 2nd half 2003), and twice the SIMD units of the G4.

Perhaps by the next revision of the chip we'll see a 1024 meg L2 on-die and connectors for 900 Mhz L3 cache.

People profess that a current 2.8ghz P4 bests a current Power4 1Ghz in SPEC benchies… Two points of rebuttal:

1) The GPUL will be approximately 80% faster than a 1Ghz Power4 upon release

2) The SPEC benchmark code fits deftly in to even a Celery's puny little cache (in other words, the current Power4 doesn't really see any advantage at all from its whoppin' 2mb L2 and muthahonkin' 32mb L3 caches)

The “Mhz Myth” debate will be very interesting in 12 months…– by MacJedi

its all but a done deal…(1:36pm EST Wed Oct 16 2002)for apple to have the Power4 chips in their products …

YEEHAWWW!!!!!

– by :P

why the animosity of Mac users to AMD(2:07pm EST Wed Oct 16 2002)good lord…they are competing on different markets. chances are, if a company is using x86 now, they arent going to suddenly switch to ppc and vice versa. the fact that ibm is producing a 32-64 bit hybrid is a good thing. it validates the hammer philosophy and proves intel's “64 bit only itanic” wrong.

i tend to see most mac-only users are assholes and most intel only users dont know what the hell you are talking about (i use anything i can check email on :)). buy the best chip to fit your needs, just dont buy intel… – by zsubnot

Me TOO!(6:33pm EST Thu Oct 17 2002)I read macsurfer.com eating a hotpocket sitting on my toilet today. We should start a club you and I…lol. – by Winblows Killer

Mac User(6:38pm EST Thu Oct 17 2002)

And by the type of comment that you just made how quickly should I judge you?.

[Quote]i tend to see most mac-only users are assholes and most intel only users dont know what the hell you are talking about (i use anything i can check email on :)). buy the best chip to fit your needs, just dont buy intel… – by zsubnot[Quote] – by I luv you Man

2004 for Apple 2002 for me(9:26pm EST Fri Oct 18 2002)Well, I will enjoy sitting back and enjoying doing my animation, video rendering, and Photoshop/ Illustrator on my new dual MP2200 (1.8ghz) with my quadro4 750, for the next year and a half. All the while any Apple zealots can enjoy fiddling around with whatever pathetic hardware they have until sometime in 2004. Which at that point they will finally have a dual 1.8GHz (mind you the IPC and bus speed will slaughter what is out today), but for now I like the idea that I have something that they simply cant have for over a year. HAHAHA. Oh yeah, wait that's right, thats the way it always is for Apple. – by Phinius

Phinius(1:06am EST Fri Oct 25 2002)Yeah, your 1.8ghz 32-bit processor must be just as good as the 1.8ghz 64-bit processor in this news item, huh? – by numbnuts

PPC 970(1:12pm EST Mon Dec 16 2002)I hope that his new processor will truly be the death of intel. If it could only get to the same clockspeed as the P4 than even idiots who dont know anything about microprocessors would have to agree that it is just as good. But there will always be those who will never agree because they are to stupid to know better. Im moving to Australia …. they dont bitch about anything down there. – by Power-Titanium